Classical Music

FRANCIS POULENC. TENEBRAE; NIGEL SHORT, CONDUCTOR. MASS IN G; LITANIES A LA VIERGE NOIR; SALVE REGINA; UN SOIR DE NEIGE; FIGURE HUMAINE; QUATRE PETITES PRIERES DE SAINT FRANCOIS D'ASSISE.

Classical Music

At the season of the winter solstice, light diminishes in our world. To counteract the onslaught of the darkness, traditional religions have created festivals to hold fast to a small steady flicker of illumination. Essential Voices USA presents a sampler of music celebrating this effort to infuse light and joy into the holiday season. We go from Thanksgiving to Christmas to Chanukah and to the New Year, with both new music and traditional carols - an emotional journey through the holiday seasons. Judith Clurman's Essential Voices USA is one of New York's preeminent choral ensembles - it performs in many of the city's iconic venues and events and records and premieres works by America's finest composers and lyricists. Regularly on stage with the New York Pops in it's Carnegie Hall subscription series, televised on NBC's July 4th Macy's 2014 Spectacular Fireworks and the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting in 2011 and 2012, the ensemble comprises a talented roster of seasoned professionals and auditioned volunteers, dynamically fitted to the unique needs of each project.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The two works on this new release are BBC Broadcast recordings from 1973 and 1977. Included on this album are The Song of Akhenaten Op. 5, and The Water and the Fire, both by Anthony Milner. The Water and the Fire is arguably the climax of Milner’s choral writing, and is widely regarded as a visionary piece. Featured artists on these recordings include soprano Janet Price , soprano Hazel Holt, tenor John Elwes, and baritone Stephen Roberts.

Includes motet(s) by Daniel Danielis. Ensemble: Pierre Robert Ensemble. Conductor: Frédéric Desenclos.

At the end of the 15th century, a young Roman shepherd discovered by accident the remains of the ancient palace built by Emperor Nero, the Domus Aurea or golden house. Thereafter, all the great artists of what History today calls Renaissance (Raffaello, Michelangelo ...) would descend into these « grottoes » to admire the last remains of Ancient Rome's painting and would launch a movement aspiring to a return to the times of Latin splendour. Amazingly vigorous, the erudite and exciting disc recorded by Roberto Festa's Daedalus ensemble leads us to rediscover the musical side of this school, of which Virgil was the model, and which will leave its mark on the whole of 16th century Europe.

The progress of Spanish colonization in the New World through the 16th and 17th century was such that during the Baroque Era the state of classical music was more advanced in Latin America than it was up north. This ambitious collection of vocal pieces by the Venezuelan early music group Camerata Renacentista de Caracas shows the geographical breadth, if not the stylistic variety, of the Latin American baroque with composers, nearly all of Spanish birth, who were based in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Many of the selections are villancicos, a ubiquitous Spanish poetic form from the 15th century which lent itself to music, often with instrumental accompaniment, both secular and sacred: in the latter development, of which there are several examples here, it became a type of Christmas carol. By and large this is lovely and invigorating music, given alert and agile performances.

Coupling powerful interpretations with path-breaking scholarship, the choir Contrapunctus presents music by the best-known composers as well as unfamiliar masterpieces. Directed by Owen Rees, a specialist in music of the 16th and 17th centuries, the group presents imaginative programmes revealing previously undiscovered musical treasures and throwing new light on familiar works.

This recording explores the musical 'cries of the oppressed' from opposite ends of Europe, which include some of the most powerful works composed in England and Portugal during this period by Byrd, Tallis, de Monte and Cardoso. The highlight perhaps is the first recording of a newly reconstructed vocal work by Thomas Tallis, 'Libera nos'. This has long been thought to be an instrumental work, and has been recorded as such, but there's persuasive historical evidence for us to be confident that this is in fact a choral setting of the antiphon 'Libera nos', and it is performed here with the relevant text restored to the five vocal parts.

Classical Music

Includes carol(s) by Richard Rodney Bennett. Ensemble: Tudor Choir. Conductor: Doug Fullington.
Includes traditional chant(s).
Includes work(s) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Robert Fayrfax, Sir William Walton, John Sheppard, Gustav Holst, Peter Warlock.

Classical Music

Telemann was a prolific composer, writing over 40 Passions for the Church of Hamburg alone. His six Passion oratorios differ in that they do not strictly adhere to the literal text of the Gospels. A delightful work that deserves to be heard more often, Das selige Erwägen, was in its time one of Telemann’s most popular and frequently performed compositions. This recording is the perfect starting-point to explore the rich landscape this 18th-century German music.

Mozart: Gehn wir i'm Prater, Secular Canons, Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Artist Chamber Choir Of Europe, Nicol Matt conductor, Format 1 CD, Mozart considered canon-writing an essential compositional skill. Though canons are often small chamber works to be performed in company, Mozart's sketches of some of these works show that the composer carefully considered them before completion, giving them as much thought as his larger and more famous works. This collection includes Mozart's complete canons. The works vary in instrumentation and character; among the vocal ones are puzzle canons (which show one line of music and text, along with only the entry points of the other parts), the ambitious 12-part V'amo di core and the multi-lingual Bona nox! Bist a rechta Ox. Mozart's sense of humor is demonstrated in the two canons written to the daringly-named text of Leck mir den Arsch, as well as in the Difficile lectu mihi mars et jonicu difficile which, provided that the singer has the right accent, provides much hilarity. Aside from the vocal canons, there are several written for instruments, including the Adagio in F major, composed for two basset horns and bassoon. The vocal canons are performed here by the acclaimed Chamber Choir of Europe, directed by Nicol Matt. The collection also boasts performances by the Klarinetten-Trio der Musikschule Achern-Oberkirch and distinguished soloists of the Württembergischen Philharmonie Reutlingen. Recorded November 2002, Alte Kirche Fautenbach, Germany. That Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not the angelic Wunderkind living in his musical heaven of divine inspiration is proven by his secular canons, which he wrote as a personal pastime entertainment. This is the other side of the genius, essential in order to get the complete picture of Mozart the man and musician. Not all canons bear titles like "leck mir den Arsch", some others are extremely witty and inventive musical jokes. Expertly sung and performed by the Chamber Choir of Europe, conducted by Nicol Matt.

Classical Music

REVIEWS:
"...Lisa Larsson and Klaus Mertens are superb, and Koopman directs with an appropratiely light touch....all round a strong recommendation for persuasive performances of Bach's too-seldom-heard early Leipzig cantatas."

Szymanowski: Stabat Mater - Litania - Demeter

It took more than five decades after the Psalms of David for Krzysztof Penderecki to produce another large-scale vocal-instrumental work setting Polish texts. It was a commission from the Fryderyk Chopin National Institute for a piece to be performed at the final concert of the Chopin Bicentenary celebrations that offered Penderecki a suitable opportunity to turn again to Polish poetry. The conductor Wojciech Rajski leads the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and a trio of vocal soloists.

Occasioned to coincide with the 230th birthday of the German composer Louis (Ludwig) Spohr (1784-1859) in April, 2014, this release of the new, live recording of his oratorio Der Fall Babylons (1839-40) features the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, conducted by Matthias Stanze and a fine cast of singers including the St. Petersburg-born soprano Ekaterina Kudryavtseva and the Swiss tenor Matthias Stier.

The "Stabat mater" by the Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorák, well-known in it's later orchestral version, was initially composed with piano accompaniment. This rarely-heard original version has now been recorded for BR-KLASSIK, featuring the excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus under the direction of Howard Arman, and accompanied by Julius Drake on the piano. The young Dvorák was a well-studied and experienced church musician. Having graduated from the organ school in Prague, he spent three pious years as an organist in the city's St. Adalbert's Church. The search for a "truly sacred music" preoccupied him from the very start. The contemporary Caecilian Movement for church music reform led him, like many of his colleagues, to re-examine the Palestrina style, which represented a return to the more modest, less ostentatious and yet at the same time contrapuntally ingenious church music of a previous epoch. He duly composed a "Stabat mater" without orchestral splendour and with a simple piano accompaniment. Shortly before Dvorák wrote down this first version of his "Stabat mater" between February 19 and May 7, 1876, a heavy blow had struck the young family. On December 19, 1875, his daughter Josefa died two days after she was born. Dvorák did not set all the verses of the hymn to music, and chose an ensemble of four soloists, a choir and a piano. This original version from the spring of 1876, with it's seven-movement structure, is not a fragment, draft or piano reduction but an independent and self-contained work in it's own right. In the autumn of 1877, when he composed the missing four verses and scored his "Stabat mater" for a large orchestra, he effectively created a new and different work.

Continuing Signum’s new partnership with Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort following the triumphant success of Berlioz’s 'Grande Messe des Morts' (SIGCD280 –, their next release will be a recording of the groups' renowned a cappella programme of music for mourning and consolation. This is a beautifully poignant programme of British choral music, including works by composers as diverse as Morley and Dove, Sheppard and Walton and featuring Howells’ sublime 'Requiem'.

Classical Music

Classical Music